Bangladesh police today arrested a suspected Islamist militant from the border district of Ukhia, near camps where thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar have taken shelter.<\/p>\n
The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite police tasked with tackling Islamist extremism in the Muslim-majority country, said it detained 30-year-old Sharful Awal for allegedly communicating with international Jihadist groups.<\/p>\n
Awal was freed on bail in January after he was charged with anti-terrorism and explosives-related offences in the Chittagong region, RAB local chief Ruhul Amin said in a statement.<\/p>\n
But after his release, Awal “communicated with various international militant groups through social media in an effort to establish Khilafat (a caliphate) through so-called Jihad,” Amin said.<\/p>\n
Police allege Awal is a member of a new faction of the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a homegrown Islamist group, and was involved in organising local extremists.<\/p>\n
The new JMB faction has been blamed for a wave of attacks on foreigners and religious minorities, including the deadly attack on a posh Dhaka cafe last year in which 18 foreigners were shot and hacked to death.<\/p>\n
But the RAB’s Amin said authorities have not found any connections so far between Awal and Rohingya refugees.<\/p>\n
An estimated 655,000 Rohingya have left Myanmar since late August to escape what UN officials have termed ethnic cleansing with possible “elements of genocide”.<\/p>\n
Most of the refugees have settled in Bangladesh’s southeastern border areas like Ukhia.<\/p>\n
Bangladeshi authorities have stepped up security and surveillance efforts in the Rohingya camps over fears the squalid settlements could be perfect recruitment grounds for homegrown and international extremist groups.<\/p>\n
The country’s border forces have also tightened patrols to prevent Rohingya militants — who have carried out a series of attacks on Myanmar security posts since October last year — from entering Bangladesh territory.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bangladesh police today arrested a suspected Islamist militant from the border district of Ukhia, near camps where thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar have taken shelter. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite police tasked with tackling Islamist extremism in the Muslim-majority country, said it detained 30-year-old Sharful Awal for allegedly communicating with international Jihadist groups. Awal was freed on bail in January after he was charged with anti-terrorism and explosives-related offences in the Chittagong region, RAB local chief Ruhul Amin said in a statement. But…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5966,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964\/revisions\/5966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}